Some Star Wars fans lament the new movie brings a disturbance into The Force and takes the saga too far into gritty reality, losing the feelgood fantasy factor on the way. "The Last Jedi's" villains disagree.
ADVERTISEMENT"I've seen this raw strength only once before...It didn't scare me enough then...it does now," says Luke Skywalker at one point in "The Last Jedi".
A scary Star Wars? "The Last Jedi" is being slammed as a travesty by some fans outraged at what they see as a disturbance in The Force. A trio of villains disagrees.
Metamorphosis master Andy Serkis plays "Snoke", a new character.
"I mean, the world is such a horrendous place at the moment. I mean, you got to make, you know, the dark side, you know, fizz in a particular way," he says. Recruiting scary, the filmmakers had "Game of Thrones" Gwendoline Christie, who plays "Captain Phasma", near the top of their list.
"And, also, by playing these sort of extravagant-seeming characters, you are able to really look at the humanity of who they are and what it is that motivates them," she says. "But you have a security that they seem so much larger than life but, really, it's about their very basic wants and needs. What motivates them."
"Fulfil ...your...destiny"
Is the seventies saga's destiny to reflect the changing times as it progresses, or is episode eight simply too dark?
Domhnall Gleeson plays "General Armitage Hux".
"You want to maintain a kind of a certain discipline. You've got to, you've gotta go hardcore. I like that," he insists.
"I need someone to show me my place in all this..."
The simple good-bad tension of the original provided a sort of catharsis; in "The Last Jedi" it's not so simple.
"Well, there's bad bad, like the badness that's going on in the world, where real leaders who are, you know, trying to destroy each other are not making such a good job of things and people are having a tough time," says Serkis. "And then there's 'Star Wars' bad, which is kind of a -- we lift the lid on it a little bit and allow the audience to enjoy how dark it can get."
Gleeson seems to refuse to take it all too seriously.
"We put the 'fun' in dysfunctional," he quips.
"This is not going to go the way you think..."
The critics love it, and the box office is great. but has it overreached beyond good family entertainment?
The final quote applies to the audience as much as the film's disoriented heroes.